“My lord, my lord, you go to danger! I see javelins in the air, I see arrows, I see daggers, swords—”
“Do I not every day eat and drink with danger? Rule here, fight there—everywhere alike leaps the wolf, creeps the serpent!”
“Who keeps the city? Who keeps us for my lord until he returns?”
“Sadyattes keeps the city.”
“Oh, when you are gone Aryenis will rule us heavily, us here in the Fountain Palace! Oh, when you are gone your son Smerdis must say ‘my lord’ to Alyattes! Oh, Aryenis gloats upon power, envies power. Oh, she would snatch it, if she might, even from Meranes’s hand!”
“Would you not, if you could, Egyptian, strangle Aryenis!”
“Would she not strangle me? Would she not, for her son, strangle my son and yours, Meranes? Would she not do more than that—? Oh, let me speak now, for when you are gone I shall not speak! I shall creep by the wall, I shall keep Smerdis with me in the shadow—”
“Who loves me will hurt nothing that is mine—not Smerdis, not Nitetis!”
Nitetis raised herself upon her palms, looked at him from between fine waves of blackness. “O lord, ruler and god of me! Let thy slave tell thee a fault of the lion! It is not to deign to suspect other wills and purposes moving in the plain and the jungle, for that, O my king, would hurt the pride of the lion!” With her hands she drew her hair about his feet. “But I, my lord, who am only a woman out of Egypt, can see the serpent and her rings and guile! And I who am naught can see because of utter love, utter love, utter love of Meranes!”
She put her lips against his feet. “Slay me if you will! And with my last breath I will say that only the Egyptian here, that only the Egyptian here, loved you, Meranes!”